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50 years
in 50 days
What were the biggest events of the past half-century, and how did The Australian cover them? Every day until July 15, we present a snapshot of one year in the news. Discover great journalism, photography, cartoons and illustrations from 1964 to 2014, with readable front pages from our archives.
1964
A journey begins
It is part of the human condition that we repackage time. As the years drift by we consign to the forgettery those uncomfortable elements we feel we no longer need and we neatly bundle the decades into simple, easy and settled perspectives.
We remember Australia in the early 1960s as a nation relaxed and comfortable in the torpor of the post-war years of physical and spiritual recovery; of new families in project homes on quarter acre blocks in sprawling suburbs; of two-tone Holdens in the drive and Menzies in The Lodge.
Sunk by a prank
October 24: The Australian swim team leaves the Tokyo Olympics with six gold medals. Dawn Fraser wins a third gold at consecutive Olympics, but a prank – stealing a flag from the grounds of the Imperial Palace – sparked a swimming ban on her the following year.
The Gold Coast
Sun, surf, sand and just a hint of sin: While Bernie Elsey was hosting notorious pyjama parties at The Beachcomber motel, regularly raided, a Methodist church teenage cabaret “combines folk singing with other primitive art forms like the twist and the stomp”, a Christmas travel feature noted.
1965
Come the revolution
In 1965 the seismic changes in Australian society, evident when The Australian was launched the year before, gathered pace. In Canberra, Sir Robert Menzies entered his 18th year presiding over the political landscape but elsewhere, the earth was trembling.
Mini dress, maxi outrage
A dress five inches above the knee, no hat, no gloves, no stockings!
Tennis triumph
What a great year to be an Aussie at Wimbledon. Roy Emerson beat Fred Stolle in the men’s finals and Margaret Smith (Court) took out the women’s title. And John Newcombe and Tony Roche won the men’s doubles
1966
The road to innovation
In the 20th anniversary issue of The Australian, proprietor Rupert Murdoch declared: “We have conquered the tyranny of distance.” But in the early 1960s the tyranny all but conquered his audacious dream of a national newspaper designed to unite the national conversation. Only in 1966 did an answer come to the impossible mission of producing a daily newspaper in Canberra and having it on the breakfast tables of homes around this vast nation.
Fight for the right (to eat margarine)
“The right of a housewife to use margarine in preference to butter seems a small issue when measured against some of the loftier aspirations of democracy.
The (non-PC) bikini BC
Who could possibly believe that the bikini dated back One Million Years BC (in fur, of course)? And in an Ice Age? Raquel Welch proved the point in the ’66 movie, the poster of which graced a thousand bedrooms.
1967
The Road to recovery
When The Australian was launched it proclaimed it would report the nation to Canberra and Canberra to the nation. Three years later, in 1967, the first part of that compact was abandoned and the operation moved, lock, stock and barrel, to Sydney.
Cup champions
Has there been a greater trainer-jockey combination than Bart Cummings and Roy Higgins? They won the Melbourne Cup together with Red Handed, building on their 1965 success with Light Fingers.
What a carnival
March 12: The Seekers, at the height of their popularity, draw a crowd of 200,000 to a concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. That was one-tenth of the entire population of Melbourne at the time.
1968
Year of wonder and despair
News can be a bit like the weather. Sometimes there is a drought and newspaper editors must scratch and poke around to find morsels for their front pages. Other times news comes as a torrent, swamping us all and barely giving us time to draw breath. 1968 was such a year.
At home and abroad, rapid-fire events changed the direction of history and changed our lives.
The Monkees
“Madness! Auditions – folk and rock’n’roll musicians and singers for acting in a new TV series. Running parts for four insane boys aged 17-22”. From that ad in the US the Monkees were born. They toured Australia in September.
Lionel Rose becomes world champ
Lionel Rose becomes the first Aborigine to hold a world boxing title when he defeats Fighting Harada for the bantamweight title in Tokyo
1969
The greatest show on Earth
What was the biggest story of the 20th century? Was it man’s first flight, the advent of radio and television broadcasting, the discovery of penicillin, the emancipation of women through The Pill, the invention of the silicone chip which spawned computing, the two world wars, the internet or the flight to the moon?
Train tragedy
Nine people are killed and more than 50 injured when the Southern Aurora collides with a goods train at Violet Town in Victoria
Hippie Trip
The tribal love-rock musical Hair, complete with nudity, four-letter words and a message of love, peace, happiness and everything hippie-dom, opens at the Metro Theatre, Sydney.
1970
Turning up the heat
The Australian grew in confidence in 1970. Under the editorship of Adrian Deamer it demonstrated a new energy, found a stronger voice, embraced a new and crisper design and honed and polished its story selection to reflect its unique position as a national daily.
Susan Peacock
Susan Peacock (later, Susan, Lady Renouf) arrived on the political stage in a bedroom farce. The then wife of promising young minister for the army, Andrew Peacock, endorsed Sheridan Sheets in advertisements – something seen as not quite fitting, so to speak.
The Female Eunuch
Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch is published in December and quickly becomes a significant work for the growing feminist movements
1971
Leadership ping-pong
Passions ran hot in Australia in 1971. The nation was deeply divided over the Vietnam war and the hated “lottery of death” that sent conscripts to the front line if they were unlucky enough to have their birth date plucked from a barrel; the proposed Springbok rugby tour inflamed opinion and stirred unrest from coast to coast and the 22-year rule of the Coalition was foundering on the personal animus between John Gorton and William McMahon.
Slashing Design
It was the dress that split the nation. Sonia McMahon wowed the Nixon White House when she and prime minister husband William McMahon arrived for dinner in November.
Aussies must win
Remember the times! It was Aussie vs Aussie at Wimbledon when our own Evonne Goolagong beat our own Margaret Court.
1972
Time for a change
Australia changed in 1972. The youth revolution of the 60s was maturing as pressure for change, first expressed through flower power and street protests, was elevated to political debate and formulated as policy. After two decades of somnolent conservative government there was a palpable feeling among voters that “It’s Time.”
Pollie in pink
Dressed in a white t-shirt, pink hot pants and long socks, Don Dunstan entered SA Parliament on a hot, hot day in November and raised the temperature. His “most far-out gear ever”, remarked one perceptive spectator.
A winning grey
The wonderful Goondiwindi grey Gunsynd was spoiling punters, winning hearts – and requiring alterations at the local TAB. The small Queensland border town’s betting shop constructed a Gunsynd-only window to deal with local loyalists.
1973
All the world's a stage
In 1973 The Australian declared Gough Whitlam to be its Australian of the Year and the newly elected Prime Minister dominated the news from the start. His government declared peace in the Vietnam war, diplomatically recognised North Vietnam, introduced no fault divorce, took control of indigenous policy, cut tariffs by 25 per cent, nominated Galston as the site for a second Sydney airport and reeled under the impact of the first oil shock.
Red Rage at Blue Poles
The work of a drunk – and $1.3 million! Gough Whitlam copped a caning when he bought American artist Jackson Pollack’s Blue Poles for the National Gallery in Canberra.
Award for White
Novelist Patrick White received recognition by winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, which paid tribute to his “epic and psychological narrative art, which has introduced a new continent into literature”.
1974
Spinning out of control in a crash-through world
IN 1974 the Australian economy reeled from the impact of the first oil shock, wages soared as a result of the Whitlam government’s pacesetting public service pay rises, inflation rose by double digits, Richard Nixon was besieged by the Watergate scandal in the US, a cyclone flattened Darwin and Gough Whitlam called a snap double dissolution election.
Watergate
From a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington on June 17, 1972 to the resignation of a president in disgrace on August 9 1974, “Watergate” became an agonising time for America.
Cranky Franky
What worse crime could Cranky Frankie commit than to abuse the Australian press and call women journos “hookers” during a concert in Melbourne?
1978
Heeding the front page
In 1978 Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies died, along with two Popes and the last whale to be hunted by Australians before a ban on whaling came into effect. The political career of Gough Whitlam also expired as he resigned from parliament, leaving Bill Hayden to resuscitate a shattered Labor Party.
Gay rights movement
It started as a gay rights march in Sydney to commemorate the Stonewall riots in New York and ended in its own confrontation with police.
Trumphant Tracey
Swimmer Tracey Wickham was back in Brisbane victorious after wins – and world records -- in the 400m and 800m freestyle events at the Edmonton Commonwealth Games and the World Championships in Berlin.
1975
On a slippery path to the cliff
In The Australian’s 50 years of publication no year stands out more starkly than 1975. This newspaper’s role in The Dismissal – the removal of the Whitlam government from office on November 11, 1975 – is still debated. Depending on your point of view, November 11 was the day when Australia was rescued from political insanity – or a day of infamy that traduced democracy. Nearly four decades on, it remains a sore point on the nation’s body politic.
Fall of Saigon
It was the endgame in the Vietnam war in April. South Vietnam’s forces surrendered to the victorious Viet Cong in Saigon on April 30 after troubled scenes at the US Embassy with the final retreat of officials.
Thatcher ascends
The Conservative party votes Margaret Thatcher as their leader.
1976
Post-Dismissal blues
ECHOES of The Dismissal and the election that saw the decisive end of the Whitlam government reverberated into 1976. Any hope that The Australian’s controversial campaigning role in the constitutional crisis might be quickly forgotten evaporated early in the year when it broke news of a secret Labor Party funding deal.
The front-page story that revealed the ALP had negotiated a half-million dollar payment from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to cover election costs carried the byline “By a Special Correspondent.”
And Blue Hills too
And old-time entertainment took another blow: Blue Hills, the longest running radio serial in Australia, ended after 27 years.
Wran to power
After a disastrous year for Labor in 1975, Neville Wran won the NSW election for the ALP on May 1.
1977
A tyro makes his mark
When The Australian celebrates its 50th anniversary at a black tie function in Sydney next month, the guest of honour will
be Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Thirty-seven years ago, in 1977, when he sprang to prominence through The Australian’s
pages, few would have been willing to predict his rise to the top of Australian politics.
But Les Hollings, then the editor of The Australian, was struck by the 19-year-old law and economics student’s audacity
and drive and his passionate campaign against compulsory unionism and predicted Abbott would have a profound influence on
national life.
Off the Wall
After Gough’s extravagance with Blue Poles, the Fraser government wasn’t going there when the National Gallery in Canberra proposed buying Georges Braque’s Grand Nu for $1.5 million.
All us Possums
Dame Edna was off to Broadway and as a parting shot rewrote the alphabet for the Weekend Australian. A was for the ABC
whose shows were “a must in my home and I always insist the family watch them while I keep myself alert brewing the black
coffee and distributing no-doze tablets”.
1979
Bye to a decade of tumult
By 1979 Australia’s great post war decade of change was coming to a close. The nation had been transformed by the convulsive social, economic and cultural upheavals of the 70s – the Whitlam experiment, the constitutional crisis, Britain’s turn to Europe, new divorce laws and new freewheeling attitudes.
An Earl assasinated
Terror struck the royal family when Prince Philip’s uncle and a favourite of Prince Charles, Lord Mountbatten, was murdered in a bomb attack on his fishing boat by the Provisional IRA on June 21.
Berts knockout
It was the Logies’ most memorable moment. “I like the boy,” host Bert Newton said about guest Muhammad Ali, unaware that it could be interpreted as a racist slur.
1980
Rationalism takes hold
THE world began a new era of reform in 1980. Margaret Thatcher was demolishing the neo-socialist state that had turned Britain into the sick man of Europe, while in the United States Ronald Reagan was elected promising similar economic policies, vowing to deliver greater freedom and smaller government.
Australia’s first IVF birth
Back then they were called test-tube babies; today the IVF procedure is so common as to be unremarkable. Australia’s first IVF birth, coming two years after the first in the world, was Candice Reed, born on June 23 to Linda Reed. Turning 30, Candice said: “The best thing about being an IVF baby was knowing that I was loved and wanted well before I was even conceived.”
Azaria Chamberlain disappears
It was the night of August 17. Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, on a camping trip to Ayers Rock, report that baby Azaria has been snatched from their tent by a dingo. So begins one of the longest legal sagas – and miscarriages of justice – in Australian history.
1981
Gunshots echo around the world
World events rather than domestic dramas dominated the headlines of 1981. Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President of the United States on January 20, only to be wounded in an assassination attempt 68 days later. Pope John Paul II was also shot and wounded in St Peter’s Square and Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat was killed as he saluted a military victory parade.
Charles marries Diana
“Joy and jitters as they wed”, read the headline on July 30 after the wedding of Charles and Diana. “A fairy tale comes true for a princess.” More jitters than joy, as it turned out.
A dingo stole Azaria
On February 20 the Alice Springs coroner Denis Barritt finds that a dingo or wild dog was to blame for the disappearance of the Chamberlains’ baby Azaria, but that there was interference with her clothing, found at Ayers Rock, by a person or persons unknown. The Northern Territory Supreme Court orders a new inquest on November 20.
1982
A near-death experience
The greatest drama of 1982 was the Falklands War, where a steely Margaret Thatcher orchestrated a short, sharp and spectacularly successful defence of Britain’s remote southern Atlantic islands against Argentinian invasion.
Farewell a princess
Princess Grace of Monaco dies in a car crash on September 14 while driving with daughter Stephanie in the steep hills behind her home.
Show's Over
Harry M. Miller goes to jail for 10 months on April 30 after being convicted of fraud over the collapse of the theatre ticketing agency Computicket.
1983
Afloat in a sea of change
WHEN Paul Keating observed just before the 1996 federal election: “If you change the government, you change the country”, it was more than a throwaway line. He knew it to be true because that is exactly what he and Bob Hawke did in 1983.
Royals dock
Charles, Diana and their baby son William arrive in Australia for an extended visit, echoed this year when William, Kate and their son George take in similar sights – including Uluru.
AIDS
Labelled in early reports as the black plague of the 80s, AIDS begins to take its toll at home with the first death recorded in July.
1984
Power to the individual
In 1949 when George Orwell wrote his bleak novel Nineteen Eight-Four, he imagined the rise and rise of totalitarianism, the evil influence of Big Brother and the ever-tightening control of the State over individuals.
Don't come the raw prawn Hoges
A big heart
Young teenager Fiona Coote gets a new chance to live when she receives a heart transplant on April 8 – one of the first in Australia.
1985
Older, wiser, and no longer out of pocket
1985 was a red-letter year for The Australian. It was in the black for the first time after a 21-year struggle.
Uluru handover
In one of the great symbolic acts of land transfer, Ayers Rock is handed back to its traditional Aboriginal owners by the governor-general Sir Ninian Stephen.
Geldof goodwill
With Bob Geldof at the helm, Live Aid concerts are held in London and Philadelphia to raise money ($70 million) to fight famine in Ethiopia.
1986
Farewell to Fleet St
When Rupert Murdoch hit the button to roll the presses at his new factory in Wapping, East London, on January 15, 1986, it was the publishing industry’s equivalent of the “shot that was heard around the world.”
The Shark bites
What was all that about?
A bit disappointing, do you reckon? Halley’s Comet passes by in March but viewing conditions aren’t great for the sky show.
1987
Joh aims high, falls low
1987 was a year of upheaval in Australia. On January 1 Joh Bjelke-Petersen, fresh from his seventh victory in Queensland and deluded about his popularity across the nation, announced his “Joh for PM” campaign.
Molly bares all
After 13 years, the final Countdown arrives in July. Molly Meldrum takes his cowboy hat off to salute the occasion, revealing, well, what we all suspected.
Dark reminder
In a truly effective public health ad campaign, the Grim Reaper bowls up the message that AIDS can strike all – men and women, the elderly and the young.
1988
Bicentennial and beyond
Australia entered 1988 in party mood. On January 26, 200 years after the arrival of the First Fleet, the nation celebrated its bicentenary in a sunny spectacle focused on where it all began – Sydney Harbour.
Parliament supreme
The Queen, dressed in “parliamentary pink” (notes royal tour reporter Jane Fraser), opens new Parliament House on May 9.
Lockerbie’s Legacy
Pan Am Flight 103 is on its way from London to New York when it is blown apart by a terrorist bomb just days before Christmas. All 259 people on board are killed and falling wreckage kills another 11 in the Scottish village of Lockerbie.
1989
A new epoch takes shape
1989 was not only the end of a decade – it was also the end of the Cold War, the end of the Soviet Union and communism, the end of the democracy movement in China and the beginning of a new era for The Australian.
Novel death threat
British author Salman Rushdie receives a surprise Valentine’s Day gift in the form of a fatwa pronouncement by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
Crime and punishment
In July, the Fitzgerald Report on police corruption in Queensland was tabled. The result of a two-year inquiry, it would lead to dozens of prosecutions, the jailing of former police commissioner Terry Lewis and the demise of the National Party.
